I'm teaching a trapping class at the beginning of next month to boy scouts. Ages 12-16 I have to cover types of traps, terrain, types of animals, bait, how to kill the animal, how to clean it and safety not in that order.

The biggest issue I have with teaching this class is I have to teach them how to kill the animal and how to clean it. This is my first time teaching this to really any one I've been doing it now for a couple of years but I don't really know how to go about teaching the kill. I had an idea for bringing a cage rabbit and just showing them rather then just talking about it but I don't know.

You have any ideas anything I might of missed or just pointers, or anything helpful? I'm only really teaching three types of traps, dead fall, snare, and live trap. The biggest part of safety is making sure this ain't nam and they ain't ranbow so no human traps.

this is just going to be a basic course...

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"come on you sons of b***hs! do you want to live forever?" Sergeant Daniel Daly, USMC, Belleau Wood France June 6th 1918

"You can be as mad as a mad dog at the way things went. You could swear, curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to let go" Benjamin Button

There is every chance you may end up on the NBC morning show as some blood thisty degenerate if you kill the rabbit in front if those boys. In these days of PC alot of people don't have the stomach for what has to happen for us to get the protein we eat.

Make a lesson plan and have the parents sign off on it.

If there is a Univ. in your area that has an agriculture program you could contact them for advice. Maybe Future Farmers of America could lend some assistance.

Whatever you do good luck and thanks for being willing to teach the young folks.

Some info I forgot to mention (ya I'm an idiot) this is for wilderness survival, the traps are meant to get food not just get rid of animals. I don't even know 90% of the boys that are going to be there due to the fact that there troops coming from a bunch of different places to participate in this.

This is my first time teaching really anything I have a general outline but really don't have the set plan written out yet, thanks

__________________
"come on you sons of b***hs! do you want to live forever?" Sergeant Daniel Daly, USMC, Belleau Wood France June 6th 1918

"You can be as mad as a mad dog at the way things went. You could swear, curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to let go" Benjamin Button

Explain the seriousness of taking an animal's life and the necessity of it for food. Also explain the respect that should be given to the animal that will literally be sacrificed for the food that it will provide. It happens all the time but we don't see it with hamburgers and hot dogs, and so food especially meat should never be wasted (something gave its life to provide that meat).

It will also be important to explain the importance of being able to proficiently dispatch animals to prevent needless suffering, and possible injury to you or the kids. That's not always easy to do in the wilderness with trapped animals. I'm not sure how hands on your course is going to be but we learn by doing, and to really learn it they need to trap animals, kill them, clean them, and cook them. If it happens to get messy with the killing process, well that's part of the learning and that's why we work to efficient killers (we owe it to the animals).